By Angela Difede

If you woke up this morning, opened Instagram, and were met with a sun-saturated image of the colorful cliffside of Positano, Italy that flooded you with envy, you would not be alone. Especially with all of the political and economic uncertainty in the U.S. right now, Europe is seeming more and more desirable of a place to live, work and vacation. This may have sparked for you the idea of looking into visa and dual-citizenship options, and have you questioning what you would or would not be eligible to apply for. Hopefully my thoughts and experiences will provide a useful framework for you to begin, if you are seriously considering gaining another passport.

To briefly cover my personal story: In 2009, a somewhat-distant relative died, and in their belongings was a black and white scan of an original Italian birth certificate from 1891. It was the first original source document my family had ever seen that proved our ancestry. I decided then and there to pursue whatever benefits and rights that document could be evidence of.

Slowly, over the first 10 years of the project, I interviewed my family and built a detailed family tree that included the most crucial key facts and dates: The names (including all variations! More on that later), birth dates & locations, marriage dates & locations, dates & locations of immigrant arrivals in the U.S., dates of Naturalizations to the U.S. (crucially, date of Naturalization is most probably not the date of arrival in the U.S.), and dates & locations of death, of all individuals within my Italian lineage.

By 2019, I had gathered all of that information, in addition to photocopies or originals of any birth, marriage, death, military, or naturalization documentation the family knew of. There were still many gaps in my understanding of my own family’s eligibility for dual citizenship, and my documentation, so I found myself needing more help. This was the point at which a whole new vein of commerce within the U.S. was opened up to me. For one country in the E.U. (Italy) there are at least five U.S. based small businesses scattered across the country that provide consultation, document procurement, document translation, and other research services related to applying for dual citizenship. Sometimes these companies have been started by American individuals who have done the process themselves, and feel confident enough in their knowledge to take on clientele, or they are expats from the country of origin who may have had a legal background in the E.U. before moving to America.

I approached one of these citizenship assistance companies in the United States as prepared as I could possibly be, saving me significant amounts of money and time. They helped me complete my document packet and confirmed that my family was eligible for dual citizenship, but in a category of ancestry law that meant we could not apply through the Consular system in America. Rather, we had to have legal representation in-country, to submit our paperwork, and confirm our ancestry in front of a judge in a courthouse. The U.S. company put me in touch with Avv. Salvi, at the law firm of Salvi, Saponara e Associati in Rome, and I began consulting directly with him.

Due to the Covid pandemic, the Ukraine immigration situation in-country, and the famous speed of Italian bureaucracy, the court process in Italy was slow. It was finally in 2024 that citizenship was granted to myself and my family members, opening up my ability to access Consular services in the United States such as passport ownership and overseas voting rights. This has been a paradigm shift for my entire family tree. I currently still live in the United States, but having the access and flexibility of working and living in the E.U. is invaluable.

If this all sounds overwhelming, my situation was hardly a normal one. A majority of citizenship applications can be handled by Consulates within the U.S., and don’t require in-country legal representation. A few specific details that impacted my project, making it particularly complicated but ultimately successful, were:

• Italy and the U.S. allow dual citizenship. Not every country in the E.U. allows their citizens to hold both passports. One of the first questions you should make sure of, before beginning your own journey, is if you would be required to surrender your U.S. citizenship in pursuit of your E.U. citizenship.
• How Italy treats men and women. Women and men in Italy had different rights and abilities when it came to passing down citizenship to their children, and that may very well also be the case for other E.U. countries. Another thing to be clear on early in the process.
• Italy did not become a unified modern Republic until 1946. This hugely impacted the legal rights and processes involved when dealing with documentation and legal circumstances of ancestors born before this date. Know the political history of your ancestral country enough to understand the governmental changes impacting your family timeline.

As for general advice:

• Have patience, and understand that this process could possibly take years.
• Form as comprehensive of a family tree as possible, so that you have all of the facts and know every ancestry option available to you. I ended up being granted citizenship from a completely different ancestor than had originally been intended.
• Treat it like a part-time job / your side gig, and take it seriously. Do as much of it as you can on your own, and be as prepared and organized as possible for when you do engage further assistance. It will save you time and money in the long run.
• Details matter. All of your hard work could go up in smoke if the names on documents aren’t matching up and you didn’t consider there might be spaces or capitalizations, or “i” substituted for “e”, or some such detail.
• The U.S.C.I.S. Index Search and each U.S. state’s Office of Vital Statistics / Vital Registry will become your best governmental allies in document gathering.
• Don’t hesitate. If you decide to pursue an application, begin as soon as you are able, and become aware of what’s going on politically in-country that might impact your eligibility. In 2025, Italy passed immigration reform laws that would have impacted, if not completely negated, my ability to claim citizenship. If I had hesitated for even six months, my results could have been very different.

If you have the willingness, dedication, and finances to consider this research and pursuit, it is hard to argue against doing the application. Whether it is worth the time, effort, and money is obviously on an individual basis to decide. I was financially supported by my whole extended family, and had the time and space to do this particularly involved project. Along the way, I made lifelong friendships and professional connections, changed the course of my family’s story, and supported small businesses both in the U.S. and abroad. It will remain one of the greatest projects I have ever worked on, and an achievement I will carry with me forever. It has opened up access to the entire E.U. system, on personal, professional, and economic levels. I wish you the best of luck should you decide to look into your own family’s story.

Angela Difede